WHAT IS LOVE

Love is a fickle creature, and sometimes it can get away as quickly as we meet it. Many of us have tried so many things to keep a potential partner interested in us, especially when making an impression on the first date. Men would oftentimes execute something from a playbook or pull out a few pick-up lines so that they can corner their quarry. Women would use subtle body language and speak with subtlety to capture their mate with allure. Whatever the method, it is certain that we all have tried one or two of them at some point in our lives and witnessed ourselves fail, watching our date run for the hills because we came off either too strong or too creepy. Online, we consult websites and read articles from so-called experts on how to romantically capture that potential mate, but many of their methods seem to be so outrageous that pulling one off would be a miracle in itself. But hopeless romantics need not fret! In this story, we are going to talk about some of the ways you can easily make a person fall in love with you that are backed up by science!

MAKE YOURSELF UNAVAILABLE

This may seem extremely counterintuitive and counterproductive to what we want to achieve, but hear us out. Initially, you would want to make yourself interesting and available, especially during the first few encounters with your potential mate. “The more you interact positively with someone, the more they’ll like you,” according to human behavior expert David Lieberman. And according to several studies on the topic, continued and repeated exposure to any stimulus—as long as it is pleasant—makes us want it more. It is simply in our nature to pursue the pleasurable. However, being too available may lose its charm; that is why, when you are certain that you have won him or her over with your beguiling charm, you need to show a little aloofness. Playing a little game of hard to get excites the need of a person to be around you. It gives them time to process the things that they like about you and how they would want to be around you again. People are prone to often want what they cannot have, after all. On the other hand, if you play this game a little recklessly and become constantly unavailable, you run the risk of losing your value to the person. It’s good to always be around, and it’s also good to not be around sometimes.

EMBARRASS YOURSELF

Opening yourself up to your date or your potential mate can work to your advantage. In fact, sharing a few personal, mortifying, and cringe-worthy details about yourself could give you enough of a boost to win their affection. In a four-part study conducted by researchers from the Harvard Business School, 79% of the people they surveyed preferred to date people who are “revealers”—someone who is classified as a person who is open to sharing or even confirming sketchy behaviors or an extremely embarrassing past. Having to share a few details about yourself with someone else gives a degree of “exclusivity” to information that you would rather take to the grave. It shows confidence in the person you are sharing these things with and that you are not nervous about showing your more vulnerable, human side.

EYE TO EYE

Making eye contact during a conversation, especially when trying to establish a great first impression, is essential and is no great mystery to any of us. However, the reason why it’s necessary was never made clear to us. Apparently, there is more to this than just good manners, and we can thank Harvard psychologist Zick Rubin for this amazing discovery. According to Rubin’s study, couples who are deeply in love are more likely to look at each other 75 percent of the time while in conversation. He also discovered that they are least likely to quickly look away when interrupted. How does this compare to normal, non-couples? In a normal, non-romantic situation, people look at each other between 30 to 60 percent of the time in conversation and are more likely to get distracted or turn their gazes away when someone else intrudes. The study was groundbreaking in that the “Rubin’s Scale” was invented to tell how much people are in love by counting the amount of time each person spends gazing at his or her partner. It may sound like this bit of information only applies to couples, but this is quite useful knowledge to have if you are on the lookout for a potential partner. By looking at someone while they are talking to you 75 percent of the time, you are tricking their brain into releasing chemical signals that give them the sensation of love or affection, especially if you are giving them the attention they want when they are speaking.

CREATE A SECRET LANGUAGE

It sounds goofy, but there is reason behind this little bit of madness. Have you ever been in a room of people who were telling each other an inside joke? You try to comprehend what they are saying and, failing to understand the context, you just give an uncomfortable chuckle to acknowledge the story. There is a sense of community and belongingness in a group that shares inside jokes or talks in some form of language that only they understand. In building a relationship with a potential mate, having that bond of sharing an inside joke or a weird way of saying certain words that only the two of you find hilarious is a great way of strengthening and deepening that romantic bond. This is according to a study conducted by the University of Texas. It is the feeling of belonging to something that makes creating a secret language or sharing an inside joke significant in the exercise. In order to build a relationship, one needs to have a sense of actually belonging in a group, even if it’s just between you and your date. Most likely, as your relationship progresses, you will discover that you will at times tend to speak like your partner or pick up a few speech patterns.

Thank you so much for reading!